1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a novel composition for manufacturing inner liners and inner tubes of tires and tires prepared from this composition. This composition contains an islands-in-the-sea structure in which a continuous phase is a composition of graphene oxide/rubber and a dispersed phase is epoxy natural rubber or thermoplastic resin.
2. Description of the Related Art
Inner liners of tires must be produced from soft materials that have low air permeability. Low air permeability not only maintains stable air pressure within the tires so as to ensure safe driving, but also reduces the rolling resistance of the tires. In addition, reducing the thickness of the inner liners leads to decreased fuel consumption. Butyl rubber reinforced with carbon black and halogenated butyl rubber are the most commonly used compositions for manufacturing inner liners of tires, which, however, are expensive. On the contrary, general-purpose rubber is cheap and more adhesive to the tire body. Therefore, in current trends of developing compositions for manufacturing inner liners of tires, general-purpose rubber is often used as the substrate and is reinforced by fillers or modifiers so as to achieve low air permeability while not decreasing the flexibility of the rubber.
Compositions containing general-purpose rubber as the substrate have been utilized for manufacturing inner liners of tires. International Application No. PCT/US94/03711 recites manufacturing inner liners from a composition containing general-purpose rubber and silicate clay. However, one of the disadvantages of this technique is that the air permeability of the composition is inadequately high when the content of silicate of the composition is low; and the composition becomes too rigid to manufacture inner liners when the content of silicate is high. Korea Patent No. 1999-36051 recites a composition for manufacturing inner liners that contains a thermoplastic resin compound as a continuous phase and a rubber compound as a dispersed phase. In this composition, barrier resins in flat forms are dispersed in thermoplastic elastomers to form a thermoplastic elastomer composition with low air permeability. However, such a thermoplastic elastomer composition has low adhesion to adjacent rubbers so that an adhesive layer need to be added during manufacturing tires. In Application No. 201010591408.2, Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Japan recites a modified natural rubber composition which is filled with carbon black or silica and has a content of phosphorus of 200 ppm or less. Though this rubber composition has low air permeability, it is less flexible, leading to a larger thickness of the inner liners produced therefrom as well as difficulties in achieving lightweight of tires.